#2: Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde
In which I re-read my first dud.
Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde is also among the first books that came to mind when coming up with my list for Remember This Book. Like The Great Good Thing, it’s a book I remember checking out of my local library on multiple occasions; it earned a spot on that vaunted list of obscure childhood favorites that holds a special place in my heart. Heir Apparent also has the distinction of being the first book I re-read for this project that did not live up to the expectations of memory at all.
Here's what I remembered of the book going into it: the protagonist accidentally gets trapped in a virtual reality video game and has to use her wits to get back to the real world. I had a vague idea it might be a “die in the game you die in real life” situation. I also had the sense that the protagonist had daddy issues. Was her dad the creator of the VR game? Was this a Tron scenario? I struggled to recall.
I was half-right in my recollections. Giannine does have daddy issues (and general-parent-abandonment issues), though her dad is not the creator of the VR game, just the absent father who sent her a gift card for the VR arcade. She does get trapped in the game and must beat it under threat of death, but she has lots of chances to start over again from the beginning—too many chances, in fact. One of Giannine’s frustrations is how frequently she fails and gets sent back to the beginning of the game as the timer to save her real-life body ticks down. (As it happens, it’s also frustrating to read about how frequently she gets sent back to the beginning of the game.)
Maybe part of what attracted me to the book in the first place are the interesting ideas inside, like the fact that Giannine is imperiled by CPOC, a.k.a. Citizens to Protect Our Children. This group is stereotypically against violent video games and the assumed danger presented by giving kids access to virtual reality, but their protest is ironically what damages the machine Giannine is plugged into, putting her at risk of death. CPOC’s whole deal is so pivotal to the book that Vande Velde devotes the dedication of her book to anti-censorship. Yet the theme isn’t actually explored very deeply, partially because that’s a conflict happening in the real world, and our protagonist’s story is taking place in the virtual one.
No, Giannine’s story is all about navigating the fantasy realm of her chosen VR game, an extraordinarily perilous place. She picked this particular VR game because the game trailer had a lot of good looking male characters, which, respect. (I’ve been a 14-year-old girl. I get it!) There are a lot of obstacles between her and “winning,” which in this game means securing her place as the heir to the throne of a recently deceased king. She has to combat court politics and intrigue, make allies, go on quests, and secure magical artifacts. Throughout, Giannine’s narration explains the mechanics of virtual reality (this world, as imagined in 2002, is still more advanced than the metaverse of 2023). This can be helpful for the reader, but sometimes it just serves to put distance between Giannine and the action.
I think the appeal for my younger self was in the true marriage of science fiction and fantasy. The type of princess-leader role that Giannine inhabits was always a favorite archetype of mine, and her situation kind of feeds into that self-insert dream that many young readers have. If you were really dropped into a medieval fantasy, how would you react? The strength of the book in retrospect is comedically upending that daydream. That environment is actually pretty hostile to a 14-year-old girl with modern sensibilities! I can appreciate that part of the story now, although I don’t think that’s how I was reading it then.
The disappointing part of re-reading Heir Apparent was just how juvenile it was. Of course that’s to be expected when re-reading childhood favorites, but in my memory the story was a lot more sophisticated. There’s a lot of outright goofiness to the game—spoiler alert: it was designed by a 16 year old boy—like the belligerent band of ghosts Giannine picks up during a quest or the part where she has to recite a silly poem to acquire a magic ring. And in some cases, what is meant to be comedic is genuinely problematic. There’s a lot of casual fatphobia. The tribe of fantasy “barbarians” are noted to have Jamaican-esque accents and have downright awful dialogue. (“Hello, there, my lovely,” Grimbold said to the queen. “I be guessing you still being fit enough to be breeding children.” WTF?) Frankly, I would’ve expected my younger self to have better taste, but I guess there’s no accounting for the early 2000s.
As both an avid reader and a completionist, I’m not surprised to have read some duds. But this isn’t just a book I remembered reading, it’s a book I remembered loving, and at this point I can’t totally put my finger on why. From my vantage as an adult, I don’t think Vande Velde does the best job of tying up the narrative ideas introduced. CPOC falls to the wayside for the content of the game, and though Giannine’s abandonment issues are stirred up by the virtual royal family’s dynamics, that aspect is also underexplored. The ending itself feels abrupt, as Giannine wakes up to find herself in the arms of the VR’s 16-year-old creator, who looks exactly like the Prince Kenric character she had a crush on in the game (who was also, weirdly, her virtual character’s brother). Giannine survives, she meets the real-life handsome prince, and her absent father is waiting in the other room: cut to black. (We never even get to meet the dad behind the daddy issues!!)
This book felt like one of my more obscure choices, though scrolling through the Goodreads reviews I see that there are many others out there who also remember this fondly as a childhood favorite. I’ll have to chalk it up to novelty, that virtual reality still felt like something fun and exciting reading about it as a kid, and that particular reader enjoyment-jealousy of wanting to live Giannine’s experience (minus the near-death situation). Truthfully, most of the books I’ve re-read so far I’ve actively enjoyed or at least understood the appeal, so it’s kind of fun to be thrown a curveball. They can’t all be winners. On to the next one!
Next month’s book is Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes.